On the Road

Published:Sotsial-Demokrat, No. 2, January 28 (February 10), 1909.

      Published according to the text inSotsial-Demokrat.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1973,

      Moscow,Volume 15,

      pages345-355.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Ayear of disintegration, a year of ideological and
political disunity, a year of Party driftage lies behind us. The membership
of all our Party organisations has dropped. Some of them—namely, those
whose membership was least proletarian—have fallen to pieces. The Party’s
semi-legal institutions created by the revolution have been broken up time
after time. Things reached a point when some elements within the Party,
under the impact of the general break-up, began to ask whether it was
necessary to preserve the old Social-Democratic Party, whether it was
necessary to continueitswork, whether it was necessary to go
“underground” once more, and how this was to be done. And the extreme
Right (the liquidationist trend, so called) answered this question in the
sense that it was necessary to legalise ourselves at all costs, even at the
price of an open renunciation of the Party programme, tactics and
organisation. This was undoubtedly an ideological and political crisis as
well as an organisational one.

Therecent All-Russian Conference of the Russian Social- Democratic
Labour Party has led the Party out on to the road, and evidently marks a
turning-point in the development of the Russian working-class movement
after the victory of the counter-revolution. The decisions of the
conference, published in a special Report issued by the Central Committee
of our Party, have been confirmed by the Central Committee, and therefore,
pending the next Congress, stand as the decisions of the whole Party. These
decisions give a very definite answer to the question of the causes and the
significance of the crisis, as well as the means of overcoming it. By
working in the spirit of the conferenceresolutions, by striving to makeallParty workers realise clearly
and fully the present tasks of the Party, our organisations will be able to
strengthen and consolidate their forces for united and effective
revolutionary Social-Democratic work.

Themain cause of the Party crisis is indicated in the preamble of the
resolution on organisation. This main cause is the wavering intellectual
and petty-bourgeois elements, of which the workers’ party had to rid
itself; elements who joined the working-class movement mainly in the hope
of an early triumph of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and could not
stand up to a period of reaction. Their instability was revealed both in
theory ("retreat from revolutionary Marxism”: the resolution on the
present situation) and in tactics (the “whittling down of slogans”), as
well as in Party organisation. The class-conscious workers repelled this
instability, came out resolutely against the liquidators, began to take the
management and guidance of the Party organisations into their own hands. If
this hard core of our Party was unable at the outset to overcome the
elements of disunity and crisis, this was not only because the task was a
great and difficult one amidst the triumph of the counter-revolution, but
also because a certain indifference towards the Party showed itself among
those workers who, although revolutionary-minded, were not sufficiently
socialist-minded. It is precisely to the class-conscious workers of Russia
that the decisions of the conference are addressed in the first place—as
the crystallised opinion of Social- Democracy concerning the means of
combating disunity and vacillation.

AMarxist analysis of present-day class relations and of the new policy
of tsarism; an indication of the immediate aim of the struggle which our
Party continues as before to set itself; an appreciation of the lessons of
the revolution as regards the correctness of the revolutionary
Social-Democrats’ tactics; elucidation of the causes of the Party crisis;
pointing out the role in combating it of the proletarian elements of the
Party; solution of the problem of relations between the illegal and legal
organisations; recognition of the necessity of utilising the Duma tribune
and drawing up precise instructions for the guidance ofour Duma group, linked with direct criticism of its mistakes—such was the
principal content of the decisions of the conference, which provide a
complete answer to the question of the party of the working class choosing
a definite path in the present difficult period. Let us examine this answer
more carefully.

Theinterrelation of classes in their political groupings remains the
same as that which prevailed during the past period of direct revolutionary
struggle of the masses. The overwhelming majority of the peasants cannot
but strive for an agrarian revolution which would destroy semi-feudal
landownership, and which cannot be achieved without the overthrow of
tsarism. The triumph of reaction has borne down heavily on the democratic
elements of the peasantry, which is incapable of forming a solid
organisation; but despite all oppression, despite the Black-Hundred Duma,
despite the extreme instability of the Trudoviks, the revolutionary
mood of the peasant masses is clearly evidenced even by the
debates in the Third Duma. The fundamental position of the
proletariat in regard to the tasks of the bourgeois- democratic revolution
in Russia remains unaltered: to guide the democratic peasantry and to wrest
it from the influence of the liberal bourgeoisie, the Cadet Party—which
continues to draw closer and closer to the Octobrists notwithstanding petty
private squabbles, and which recently has been striving to establish
national-liberalism and to sup port tsarism and reaction by chauvinist
agitation. The struggle goes on as before—says the resolution—for the
complete abolition of the monarchy and the conquest of political power by
the proletariat and the revolutionary peasantry.

Theautocracy, as hitherto, is the principal enemy of the proletariat
and of all democratic trends. It would be a mistake, however, to imagine
that it remains unchanged. The Stolypin “constitution” and Stolypin’s
agrarian policy mark a new stage in the break-down of the old,
semi-patriarchal, semi-feudal tsarism, a new step towards its
transformation into a bourgeois monarchy. The delegates from the Caucasus,
who wished either to delete such a characterisation of the present
situation altogether, or to substitute “plutocratic” for “bourgeois”,
were wrong. The autocracy has long been plutocratic; but it is only after
the first stageof the revolution, under the impact of its blows, that. the autocracy is
becoming bourgeois, both in its agrarian policy and its direct,
      nationally-organised alliance with certain strata of the bourgeoisie. The
      autocracy has been nursing the bourgeoisie for a long time now; the
      bourgeoisie, by means of the ruble, has long been winning its way to
      “the top”, securing influence on legislation and
      administration, and a place beside the noble aristocracy. But the peculiar
      feature of the present situation is that the autocracy has been forced to
      set up a representative assembly for certain strata of the bourgeoisie, to
      balance between them and the feudalist landlords, to form an alliance of
      these sections in the Duma; it has been forced to abandon all the hopes it
      had placed in the patriarchalism of the muzhik, and to seek support
      against the rural masses among the rich peas ants, who are ruining the
      village commune.

Theautocracy cloaks itself with pseudo-constitutional institutions, but at the
same time its class essence is being exposed as never before, owing to the
alliance concluded by the tsar with the Purishkeviches and the Guchkovs, and
with no one else. The autocracy is attempting to take upon itself the fulfilment
of those tasks of the bourgeois revolution which are objectively
necessary—the setting-up of a representative assembly of the people which
would really manage the affairs of bourgeois society, and the purging of the
countryside of medieval, entangled and antiquated agrarian relations. But the
practical results of these new steps taken by the autocracy are, so far, exactly
nil, and this only shows more clearly than ever that other forces and other
means are necessary for the fulfilment of the historical task. In the minds of
millions of people inexperienced in politics, the autocracy was hitherto
contrasted with popular representation in general; now, the struggle is
narrowing its aims, and is more concretely defining its task as the struggle for
power in the state, which determines the character and significance of
representation itself. That is why the Third Duma marks a special stage in the
break-down of the old tsarism, in the intensification of its adventurist
character, in the deepening of the old revolutionary aims, in the widening of
the field of struggle (and of the numbers taking part in the struggle) for these
aims.

Wemust get over this stage. The present new conditions require new forms of
struggle. The use of the Duma tribune is an absolute necessity. A prolonged
effort to educate and organise the masses of the proletariat becomes
particularly important. The combination of illegal and legal organisation raises
special problems before the Party. The popularisation and clarification of the
experience of the revolution, which the liberals and liquidationist
intellectuals are seeking to discredit, are necessary both for theoretical and
practical purposes. But the tactical line of the Party—which must be able
to take the new conditions into account in its methods and means of
struggle—remains unchanged. The correctness of revolutionary
Social-Democratic tactics, states one of the resolutions of the conference, is
confirmed by the experience of the mass struggle in 1905-07. The defeat of the
revolution resulting from this first campaign revealed, not that the tasks were
wrong, not that the immediate aims were “utopian”, not that the
methods and means were mistaken, but that the forces were insufficiently
prepared, that the revolutionary crisis was insufficiently wide and
deep—and Stolypin and Co. are working to widen and deepen it with most
praiseworthy zeal! Let the liberals and terrified intellectuals lose heart
after the first genuinely mass battle for freedom, let them repeat like cowards:
don’t go where you have been beaten before, don’t tread that fatal
path again. The class-conscious proletariat will answer them: the great wars in
history, the great problems of revolutions, were solved only by the advanced
classes returning to the attack again and again—and they achieved victory
after having learned the lessons of defeat. Defeated armies learn well. The
revolutionary classes of Russia have been defeated in their first campaign, but
the revolutionary situation remains. In new forms and by other ways, sometimes
much more slowly than we would wish, the revolutionary crisis is approaching,
coming to a head again. We must carry on with the lengthy work of preparing
larger masses for that crisis; this preparation must be more serious, taking
account of higher and more concrete tasks; and the more successfully we do this
work, the more certain will be our victory in the new struggle. The Russian
proletariat can be proud of the fact that in 1905, under its leadership, a
nationof slaves for the first time became a million-strong host, an army of the
revolution, striking at tsarism. And now the same proletariat will know how to
do persistently, staunchly and patiently t.he work of educating and training the
new cadres of a still mightier revolutionary force.

Aswe have said, utilisation of the Duma tribune is an essential element of this
work of education and training. The conference resolution on the Duma group
indicates to our Party that road which comes nearest—if we are to seek
instances in history—to the experience of German Social- Democracy at the
time of the Anti-Socialist Law. The illegal Party must know how to use, it must
learn how to use, the legal Duma group; it must train up the latter into a Party
organisation equal to its tasks. The most mistaken tactics, the most regrettable
deviation, from consistent proletarian work, dictated by the conditions of the
present period, would be to raise the question of recalling the group from the
Duma (there were two “otzovists” at the conference, but they did not
raise the question openly), or to refrain from directly and openly criticising
its mistakes and from enumerating them in the resolution (as some delegates
insisted at the conference). The resolution fully recognises that the group has
committed mistakes for which it was not alone to blame, and which were quite
similar to the inevitable mistakes of all our Party organisations. But there are
other mistakes— departures from thepolitical lineof the
Party. Since these departures occurred, since they were made by an organisation
openly acting in the name of the whole Party, the Party was bound to declare
clearly and definitely that these were deviations. In the history of
West-European socialist parties there have been a number of instances of
abnormal relations between the parliamentary groups and the Party; to this.day
these relations are quite often abnormal in the Latin countries, where the
groups do not display sufficient Party spirit. We must from the very outset
organise Social-Democratic parliamentarism in Russia on a different basis; we
must at once establish team-work in this field—so that every Social-
Democratic deputy may really feel that he has the Party behind him, that the
Party is deeply concerned over his mistakes and tries to straighten out his
path—so that every Party worker may take part in the general Duma work of
theParty, learning from the practical Marxist criticism of its steps, feeling it
his duty to assist it, and striving to gear the special work of the group to the
whole propaganda and agitation activity of the Party.

Theconference was the first authoritative meeting of delegates from the biggest
Party organisations to discuss the work of the Duma Social-Democratic group
during the whole session. And the decision of the conference shows very clearly
how our Party will shape its Duma work, how very exacting it will be in this
field both to itself and to the group, how undeviatingly and consistently it
proposes to work on developing genuinely Social-Democratic parliamentarism.

Thequestion of our attitude to the Duma group has a tactical and an
organisational aspect. In the latter respect the resolution on the Duma group is
only the application of our general principles of organisational policy to a particular case, principles laid down by the conference in the resolution giving
instructions on the question of organisation. The conference has recorded that
two main tendencies exist in the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party on this
question: one of them throws the weight of emphasis on the illegal Party
organisation, the other—which is more or less akin to
liquidationism—throws the weight of emphasis on the legal and semi-legal
organisations. The point is that the present situation is characterised, as we
have already pointed out, by a certain number of Party workers leaving the
Party—especially intellectuals, but also some proletarians. The
liquidationist trend raises the question as to whether it is the best, the most
active elements that are abandoning the Party and choosing the legal organisations as their field of activity, or whether it .is the “vacillating
intellectualist and petty-bourgeois elements” that are leaving the
Party. Needless to say, by emphatically rejecting and condemning liquidationism,
the conference replied that it was the latter elements. The most proletarian
elements of the Party, and those elements of the intelligentsia that were most
consistent in principle and most Social Democratic, remained true to the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party. The desertions from the Party mean its
purification, they mean getting rid of its least stable element,of its unreliable friends, of its “fellow-travellers” (Mitläufer), who always joined the proletariat for a while and who were
recruited from among the petty bourgeoisie or from among the
“declassed”, i. e., people thrown out of the orbit of some definite
class.

Fromthis evaluation of the principle of Party organisation logically follows
the line of organisational policy adopt ed by the conference. To strengthen the
illegal Party organisation, to create Party cells in all spheres of work, to
set up first of all “entirely Party committees consisting of workers, even
if their number be small, in each industrial enterprise”, to concentrate
the functions of leadership in the hands of leaders of the Social-Democratic
movement from among the workers themselves—such is the task today. Need
less to say, the task of these cells and committees must be to utilise all the
semi-legal and, as far as possible, legal organisations, to maintain
“close contact with the masses”, and to direct the work in such a
way that Social-Democracy responds to all the needs of the masses. Every Party
cell and workers’ committee must become a “base for agitation, propaganda
and practical organising work among the masses”, i. e.,
they must go where the masses go, and try at every step to push the
consciousness of the masses in the direction of socialism, to link up every
specific question with the general tasks of the proletariat, to transform every
act of organisation into one ofclassconsolidation, to win by dint of
energy and ideological influence (not by their ranks and titles, of course) the
leading role in all the proletarian legal organisations. Even if these cells
and commit tees be very small at times, they will be linked together by Party
tradition and Party organisation, by a definite class programme; and two or
three Social-Democratic members of the Party will thus be able to avoid
becoming sub merged in an amorphous legal organisation and to pursue theirPartyline under all conditions, in all circumstances and in all kinds
of situations, to influence their environment in the spirit of the whole Party,
and not allow the environment to swallow them up.

Thoughmass organisations of one type or another may be dissolved, though the
legal trade unions may be hounded out of existence, though every open act of
workers’ initiativeunder a regime of counter-revolution may be ruined by the police on one pretext
or another—no power on earth can prevent the concentration of masses of
workers in a capitalist country, such as Russia has already become. One way or
another, legally or semi-legally, openly or covertly, the working class will
find its own rallying points; the class- conscious Party Social-Democrats will
everywhere and always march in front of the masses, everywhere and always act
together in order to influence the masses in the spirit of the Party. And
Social-Democracy, which has proved in open revolution that it is the party of
the class, the party that succeeded in leading millions in strikes, in the
uprising of 1905, as well as in the elections of 1906-07, will now also be able
to remain the party of the class, the party of. the masses, the vanguard, which
in the hardest times will not lose touch with the bulk of the army, but will be
able to help the latter overcome these hard times, consolidate its ranks once
more, and train more and more new fighters.

Letthe Black-Hundred diehards rejoice and howl inside the Duma and outside it,
in the capital and in the remote provinces, let the reaction rage—the ever
so wise Mr. Stolypin cannot take a single step without bringing the precariously balancing autocracy nearer its fall, without creating a new tangle of
political impossibilities and absurdities, without adding new and fresh forces
to the ranks of the proletariat and to the ranks of the revolutionary elements
of the peasant masses. A party which succeeds in consolidating itself for
persistent work in contact with the masses, a party of the advanced class, which
succeeds in organising its vanguard, and which directs its forces in such a way
as to influence in a Social-Democratic spirit every sign of life of the
proletariat—such a party will win no matter what
happens.